BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN — Association of Southeast Asian Nations environment ministers yesterday stressed that not all issues related to the annual transboundary haze problem could be solved in just one meeting, even as reporters repeatedly quizzed them on whether there was a sense of urgency in tackling it.

The slow process is due to the countries looking not only at “short-term but long-term” solutions, said Brunei’s Minister of Development Suyoi Osman, who chaired a joint press conference after the 16th Sub-Regional Ministerial Steering Committee Meeting on Transboundary Haze Pollution ended before lunch yesterday.

He said: “It may be long haul, but this is our 16th meeting and we want to make sure that each meeting means we are that close to finding a solution ... I hope that in future meetings, we will be able to achieve more.”

When pressed, Mr Suyoi said there is “always” a sense of urgency when the five countries — Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Thailand — meet to discuss the haze, as it is a problem that has been around “for quite some time now”.

While he acknowledged that the main stumbling block — the sharing of concession maps — had not been surmounted, the minister said the countries will be moving ahead to “try to find some other ways where we can actually see the HMS (haze monitoring system) being operationalised”, such as sharing information on fire-prone areas at the government-to-government level.

The S$100,000 haze monitoring system, which Singapore developed, uses hot-spot data and satellite images to pinpoint illegal burning activities. However, it requires accurate concession maps that can specify the companies or entities with rights to carry out logging or plantation activities on a particular piece of land.

Indonesian Deputy Minister of Degradation Control and Climate Change at the Ministry of Environment Arief Yuwono said Jakarta is in the process of consolidating everything into a single map and will not be sharing its concession maps with its neighbours until the process is completed.

Similarly, Malaysian Minister of Natural Resources and Environment G Palanivel said his country will only share maps of hot spots causing the transboundary haze at the government level. “We cannot disclose the entire map of the country — that will cause a lot of other issues. So, we will restrict ourselves to areas where there is open burning, we will share on a government-to-government basis,” he said.

As to whether Indonesia and Malaysia are sufficiently prepared for the dry weather ahead — which may exacerbate the haze — both men noted that their respective countries had shared their contingency plans to tackle fires which had occurred earlier this year with their neighbours.

For example, Indonesia had carried out water bombings to put out the blaze on 20,000ha of land in Riau.

Mr Arief also said 202 individuals and 45 companies had been investigated for conducting illegal burning activities so far this year.

In Malaysia, Mr G Palanivel said, 7,000 firemen were mobilised to put out fires that had erupted in states such as Pahang, Johor and Perak, while court action would be taken against those responsible for causing the fires. He said: “I feel the situation has improved a lot now ... but because of this dry spell, sometimes, (there are things) we cannot control.”